Haier Plans Fall Cloud Services Rollout, Bows 3D and Connected TVs

LAS VEGAS -- After showing active and passive 3D TV designs at CES last year, Haier America came to this year’s show with its first market-ready 3D TVs, a series of passive models that will each ship with six pairs of polarized glasses, Ken Ayukawa, product and marketing manager, told us.

Ayukawa said Haier believes the picture quality of the latest generation of passive TVs “has improved vastly to where it’s at least equal to active-shutter” technology and a “good value proposition” in terms of panel costs at the manufacturing level and cost of glasses that will ship with the product. Haier’s differentiator will be value, shipping half a dozen pairs of glasses per set “so that everyone -- family and friends -- can enjoy the 3D at a reasonable cost,” the company said.　

Haier has no plans for active 3D TVs, Ayukawa said, but, like most everyone, is working on glasses-free technology. The company showed an autostereoscopic prototype at CES, using a lenticular lens display that Ayukawa said showed a “dramatic improvement in quality” over a prototype it showed at CES 2010, which he labeled a technology of “suspect quality.” Today’s version is vastly superior, he said, but still has a way to go before being made into a product, he said. Because of the cone-shaped design of the lenticular lens, there’s a sweet spot associated with that glasses-free approach, Ayukawa conceded, but he said the viewing angle has improved in two years. No specs were available on the viewing angle, and no commercialization plans are in the works, he said. “It’s still a work in progress,” he said, and “content is key.” Currently no movie studios or broadcasters are planning on making content available, he noted.

Haier is also developing an app store concept for connected TVs, and is working with the same partners as Panasonic and other TV companies, Ayukawa said. “We have a variation that we believe will be very effective,” he said. The Cloud Living Services program is being developed by a team in Beijing, he said. Rather than residing on the TV, the Haier apps and services will be stored in the cloud, he said. “You can then pick which service you'd like,” he said. Haier envisions Cloud Living Services to turn the TV into a “personal digital living assistant,” he said, adding “we're still working on the verbiage.” Using one of the services, families could use an on-screen calendar to notify others of appointments and events, he said. A message could notify a student about soccer practice at 4 p.m. and instruct her to get ready “because most likely they're sitting there watching TV,” he said. Haier’s cloud software and apps will be remotely accessible by tablets and other connected devices, he said.

Haier’s cloud services have launched in China for remote operation of washers and dryers, he said. The company is working on extending the sensing and control technology to its wine refrigerators as well. All of Haier’s eight new NetConnect TVs have built-in Wi-Fi to enable the cloud-based services, he said. TV prices haven’t been set, he said. Implementation of cloud-based services in the U.S. market “requires a lot of coordination” between hardware and services, he said. Ayukawa’s estimate for U.S. availability of cloud services -- “if the stars are aligned” -- is October of this year, he said.